


Shaking It Off

by Penny_P



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 08:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19741633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penny_P/pseuds/Penny_P
Summary: Ens. Hoshi Sato reflects on her first days aboard the Enterprise; set immediately following "Broken Bow."





	Shaking It Off

**Author's Note:**

> At the beginning of Enterprise, Hoshi was the character with the most qualms about space travel and everything it entailed. If courage is being scared to death but moving ahead anyway, Hoshi was the bravest on that ship. This was written shortly after that episode aired in response to a challenge from Djinn to write a piece from the pov of one of the new (then, to us) characters on Enterprise.

From the personal journal of Ensign Hoshi Sato:

No one else can feel the tremors from the engines. Isn't that strange? We've been in and out of warp often enough now for me to be certain; there is a definite shimmy above warp 3.5. Apparently, it's normal. It's something I can get used to, eventually. Probably. I mean, if it happens all the time it will start to feel routine and I won't even notice it anymore.

What really _fries_ me, though, is that T'Pol assumed I was scared when I pointed it out the first time. Pointing things out is my job. I'm on this ship because of my ability to hear - and feel - nuances, the small subtle things that others miss. That's why I'm good with languages. The difference between an apico-deltal fricative and a lamino-alveolar fricative can be the difference between welcome compliment and deadly insult, and it's my job to point that out. This ship may be state of the art, but it's still metal and bolts and unplanned shaking can be dangerous. And when it's all that's between me and the vacuum of space, well, I want to be certain everything is running the way it's supposed to run. That's not being afraid, it's just being smart.

I admit, though, that I feel a little off-balance. The translator isn't working as well as I expected, and trying to interpret a delirious Klingon while the Captain was demanding answers wasn't fun.

Klingonese is sort of fun, though. All those glottal stops and hard consonants really put me in touch with my inner samurai. It's impossible to speak that language without feeling bigger, more powerful. I wish we could have stayed a little longer on QonoS so I could pick up some more of it, but they made it pretty clear they weren't interested in a chat.

So now we're out here, exploring. Funny. When I signed on for Starfleet, I really didn't expect to be out here. I thought it would be a desk job in San Francisco, working on the translator program and the linguistics data base, with the occasional field trip to Vulcan or some other alien world with whom we've made peaceful contact. Join Starfleet and see the friendly, civilized galaxy. It sounded just adventurous enough to be cool and just safe enough to be comfortable.

Yet here I am, and it's not a friendly, civilized galaxy and it's not safe or comfortable and I'm having the time of my life. Not even that snotty Vulcan can spoil it for me. (I wonder if she speaks Navajo? Or Sanskrit? It might be fun to drop a few lines in her direction, nothing nasty, just enough to make her realize she doesn't know everything.) We're going to see things and hear things I can't even begin to imagine. With a few more languages in the database, who knows, we might actually get that translator to work.

But no one else can feel the tremors. I wonder why?


End file.
